“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.

After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.

Skeptoid, which is a good show, always gets it wrong when it comes to genetically-modified crops (here is just the first example). Brian Dunning is a clever man, but he is one among many GMO apologists who attack straw men by misrepresenting the arguments of those whom they arrogantly call “environmentalists” (it’s the way they say it which makes it insulting). Gates too used this word as an insult last year. Speaking from experience, the two key issues that are rarely addressed are:

Scientific tests which consistently show a causal correlation between GMO and negative health implications

The use of patents, racketeering, baseless legal threats, and monopolisation through pollination to create a form of monopoly abuse that also leads to imperialism and farmers being totally helpless (like computer users in the hands of proprietary software, but where food/life is involved)

Of course there are other aspects to it like the political corruption we have covered before. The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations. So the problems are real; those who deny the problems are probably not malicious, they just need to read more and be willing to accept more information (if in doubt, skip to the bottom and watch the video).

“The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations.”We cover issues that relate to Monsanto for two main reasons: (1) Monsanto is a prime example of the problems we see in the patent system and (2) Bill Gates seems to be using Monsanto to make himself richer or at least put more power in his hands. To the African and Indian populations, Monsanto should be bad news. It’s all business to them, but they mask it using slogans and euphemisms like “feeding the world” or “ending hunger”. Science and history suggest that given more food, these populations will only reproduce further, thus never ending hunger and only becoming more fragile due to high dependence on ‘enhanced’ farming (which uses up nature’s resources more quickly until they are depleted). With this somewhat obligatory background out of the way, we can hopefully approach the news without our criticism being lost or misunderstood. For those who are willing to take action, there is a new campaign titled “Stop the sneak attack on GMO food labeling!”

Some days ago it came to our attention that Gates may be promoting more GMO in India. We warned about this last year when he publicly did this and the following new article [1, 2], which was published in two Indian publications, says:

Gates praises Indian rice that can withstand flooding

[...]

“At a time of limited resources and large global challenges, this fund will leverage support from around the world to achieve lasting progress against hunger and bolster agricultural productivity and growth,” said US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.

The short story is this: Gates is publicly appealing for donations from governments (going for taxpayers’ pockets) — donations to be passed to pay for patents of big GMO/pharma which overprices vital food/drugs (while killing off or buying out organic/generics producers).

Today the Senate Foreign Relations committee held a hearing on the Global Food Security Act (S.384), which, as I have documented on this blog before, Monsanto HAS been involved in lobbying on. The bill first came to my attention about a year ago, when the same committee held a very similar hearing about the same bill. In the year since then, I’ve become increasingly knowledgeable and outraged about the issues surrounding global food security. In the meantime, the Obama Administration took the lead on the issue of global food security from the Senate, and USAID is doing quite a bit already (in partnership with the World Bank and private organizations and companies) to really f*ck things up worldwide.

The same article also appears in the Huffington Post (many comments there) and it says:

A broad coalition including Bill Gates, Tim Geithner, the US State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and others have a plan to help the world’s hungry by working in opposition to the recommendations of scientists worldwide, including the findings of a report commissioned by the World Bank and the UN. Ironically, they chose Earth Day to deliver this flaming bag of poop on Africa’s doorstep.

The article was published in response to Gates going into bed with Geithner. Here is the press release and the accompanying fluff from usda.gov. They are helping Monsanto expand to more nations with its patents and experimentation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s very irresponsible as the “Green Revolution” becomes the “Gates Revolution”, which is in turn a revolution to Monsanto shareholders and Gates’ ego/PR.

Gates made the announcement about his contribution at a joint press conference at the Treasury with Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, James Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, Yoon Jeung-Hyun, the South Korean finance minister, and Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president.

These are very small amounts compared to the total. It is intended to get governments (i.e. taxpayers) to put money in companies that Gates loves as he’s an investor in them. Gates did exactly the same thing last month but that applied to big pharmaceutical companies that Gates is a shareholder of. He successfully convinced governments to funnel money into those companies, which means that taxpayers will pay them for patents that are a barrier to helping third-world nations. How utterly selfish.

The United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have agreed to make small holder farmers, especially women, a major thrust of a new multilateral agriculture and food security programme.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again